REVIEW | EOW ENGLAND 2018 – THE FINAL

After 5 incred­ible heats spread across Lon­don, Bris­tol and Brighton, End of the Weak Eng­land had found our 5 final­ists to com­pete to be crowned EOW Eng­land MC Chal­lenge cham­pi­on 2018 at Hootananny Brix­ton. But, to get there, the heat win­ners had to get through a lyr­ic­al man moun­tain who’d already held the title twice – last year’s EOW World Final bronze medal­list Gee Bag going for a hat-trick of con­sec­ut­ive domest­ic wins. Along­side the prestige of being EOW Eng­land champ was the chance to com­pete at the EOW World Finals in Par­is. Look­ing to build on the spec­tac­u­lar sold out 1000+ crowd and a week of con­stant fest­iv­it­ies laid out by EOW Prague, the EOW France fam have secured an epic arena for this year’s final. ‘La Place’ is lit­er­ally an arena 100% ded­ic­ated to Hip Hop cul­ture, with facil­it­ies includ­ing 8 stu­di­os for record­ing, DJing, video pro­duc­tion and more. To win this final was to win the oppor­tun­ity to per­form at France’s Hip Hop HQ. Adding to that, inter­na­tion­al super­star Thun­der­cat was in attend­ance, as were our EOW Bel­gi­um fam, and 2018 final­ist COI blessed us with an acapella of the highest order. The emcees were fully motiv­ated, res­ult­ing in a final to rival any oth­er we’ve had.

So, the final­ists:

Broken Pen

South-East London’s Angolan/Portuguese FRSHRZ rep­pin’ Broken Pen shelled down the Empire Bar in Hack­ney with a crazy combo of energy, pre­cise flows and pure lyr­i­cism, mani­fes­ted in his A‑Z allit­er­ated acapella that could hold it up to any oth­er ver­sion pre­vi­ously done

Wish

West coun­try don Wish had over­come the best com­pet­i­tion his diverse homet­own scene could pro­duce with his depth of con­tent and ver­sat­il­ity, shelling down all the styles DJ Snuff threw at him in the DJ vs MC round like it was a UK Bass show.

Huski88

Mas­ter keys player/punchline extraordin­aire Huskie88 was back in the final for a second year after over­power­ing some truly power­ful oppon­ents in fel­low 2017 final­ists Emerge MC and Watusi87 of RU1 Fam at Grow, Hack­ney. Huski88 was ser­i­ously focused on vic­tory, quot­ing Afro Samurai on social media, say­ing he’s ‘com­ing for the num­ber 2 head­band’ – if you know you know.

Feline

Tak­ing an unortho­dox route to the final, Feline was booked in to bring his ragga inspired flow to com­pete in Bris­tol, but had to pull out. He was so determ­ined to show his skills he trav­elled to Lon­don for the Con­greg­ate Brix­ton heat, where he defeated 2017 final­ist Men­ace Men­d­oza with his pure pos­it­iv­ity and double time fused rhyme pat­terns.

Gram­ski

The free­style slam poet secured a hard-won vic­tory in his nat­ive Brighton; a rowdy crowd, dif­fi­cult mic-sound qual­ity and then the heat being so close that it went to a tie break against Break-A-Bar cham­pi­on Hugh­dem. Gram­ski had fully earned his spot in the final, and was ready with his unique brand of cre­ativ­ity.

Gee Bag

The champ knows exactly what it takes to win this com­pet­i­tion, he’s done it for the last 2 year years in a row. The ques­tion here was if he’d have the focus and drive to do it for a 3^rd time…or if someone would be able to out­shine him.

With the 6 fire emcees, Mas Law and Kissy K on host­ing duties, Snuff and Jazz T behind the decks and a rammed Hootananny dance­floor, the com­ple­tion was all set up for some mad­ness.

Round 1 – Writ­ten

The writ­ten round was as dope as it should be for a final. Broken Pen came out spit­tin’ rap­id­fire over ‘For­got about Dre’, wavy Wish star­ted with the man­tra ‘con­tent over flows’ mak­ing sure he was flex­ing his lyr­i­cism, tight and clear. Huski opened up with a call and response about nev­er giv­ing up on your dreams (that he slipped up on a bit) before going into a char­ac­ter­ist­ic punch­line filled bar packed inside of some crazy flows. That level of energy was held up by Feline, who brought Rod­ney P and People’s Army clas­sic ‘Live Up’ instru­ment­al, with a vari­ety of flows and chants deliv­er­ing an uplift­ing mes­sage for people to ‘wake up’. 

Gram­ski came next and decided to per­form ‘Vil­lage of the Cra­zies’, the same track from his heat, a doc­u­ment­ary style ana­lys­is of Brighton’s drug fuelled under­belly. With the improved sound qual­ity he got his mes­sage across a lot bet­ter and a bet­ter response. Then came Gee Bag, telling the crowd ‘I’m a per­former, this is my track, no instru­ment­al’ and then laid down his verse from ‘Anni­hil­ate’, the Sam Krats track he fea­tures on with El Da Sen­sei. His deliv­ery, crowd inter­ac­tion and stage pres­ence were that of a seasoned vet, and made him stand out over the oth­er com­pet­it­ors. The champ had taken the first round and set the level for the rest of the final.

Round 2 – Acapella

In reverse order, Gee Bag came back on stage with a chair he’d pulled from his goody gag, and sat down ready to address the crowd. Between dope punch­lines like ‘I’m an ori­gin­al with this know offi­cial flow, all my haters can kiss my arse under the mistle­toe’, he left a few deep­er jew­els like, ‘now who gave you the right to crush beings, gold stolen from the world put into museums, des­pite what’s happened I’m down with a couple Europeans, Africa the moth­er­land has to place that I’m flee­ing’.
The crowd loved it, just like they loved what Gram­ski did next. In an attempt to reclaim let­ter com­bin­a­tions hijacked by racist groups, the slam poet rhymed a whole load of dif­fer­ent acronyms for the let­ters EDL in a spec­tac­u­lar way. With time left to go, he revis­ited one of the best verses we’ve ever seen in EOW Eng­land his­tory (from his 2017 heat per­form­ance) and broke down the mean­ing of what it is to be an MC in the same style. It was crazy!

Feline kept look­ing at the pos­it­iv­ity he lives, flow­ing about one­ness and the import­ance of Hip Hop as a uni­fy­ing force. Huski kept with mon­ster lines; ‘It’s thun­der and light­ning when I’m writ­ing sutin’,yellow suit, white cape, bald head, those types of punches, total elim­in­a­tion is my writ­ing func­tion, [point­ing a Mas Law] you ain’t giv­ing me rap oppon­ents you’re provid­ing lunches’ (if you know about One Punch Man you know that’s a killer line!). He then packed in more IT and social media ref­er­ences than I’ve ever heard into the last few bars of his verse.

Wish came with more deep con­tent and killer rhyme pat­terns about grow­ing up in his ends and the obstacles there for youts deal­ing with that now. Broken Pen decided to redo his A to Z acapella from his heat. It’s a power­ful set of bars, but unfor­tu­nately it didn’t make the same impact, par­tially because a lot of us had heard it before and because with the stricter time lim­it he didn’t get through it all. It would have been dope to see him try a dif­fer­ent verse; I know he’s got some more fire in those rhyme books and memory banks.

Round 3 – Grab Bag

The Grab Bag round is very often the point where we start to see who’s tak­ing con­trol of the chal­lenge, and it was def­in­itely the case in this final. Feline, Wish and Broken Pen all help it up like heat win­ners should, no mis­takes, no chokes, and good lines. Huski took it a bit fur­ther, really going in, espe­cially when he pulled out a toi­let roll fol­lowed by toi­let bleach, and went into detail about bath­room dif­fi­culties and flush­ing. But Gee Bag and Gram­ski both took it to anoth­er level…

Before start­ing, Gee Bag pulled out a tie and blindfolded…BLINDFOLDED him­self! Not only would he not know what was com­ing out the bag, he had to fig­ure each item out by feel­ing them, all while free­styl­ing about them…and he did it…very fuck­ing well. The best lines where when he pulled out a sauce­pan and said he had a met­al cap and when he pulled out a new jar of cof­fee and fingered the foil seal say­ing it was like a pussy!

Gram­ski treated the bag like it con­tained the mean­ing of life, and used each item to high­light a life les­son we can take from them:

• Toi­let brush = clean up the shit life gives you, in your mind and in the world
• Clown bowtie = don’t take life too ser­i­ously and have fun
• Earli­er, Kissy had said Gram­ski doesn’t look like a typ­ic­al emcee so he dropped this line ‘Who are you? Who am I? I’m a fuck­ing rap­per mate, don’t believe me, I’ll wrap you up in fuck­ing gaf­fer tape’ when he pulled some out the bag
• a star = reli­gions (ref­er­en­cing the nativ­ity star) are all sim­il­ar.

It was incred­ible, one of the best Grab Bag rounds I’ve seen.

Round 4 – DJ vs MC

Round four took a sim­il­ar pat­tern. With Jazz T on the decks, a brudda with one of the deep­est and most var­ied music col­lec­tions I’ve ever known, the emcees were in for some ser­i­ous dif­fi­culty. Gee Bag kicked it off and did what he does, var­ied flows, a mix of writ­ten bars and genu­ine free­styles and dealt with everything Jazz sent him. Feline and Wish both did the same but with a bit less ease than Gee Bag, his exper­i­ence was start­ing to really show.

Hus­kis round was real inter­est­ing; it was this point where he lost the 2017 final, giv­ing up halfway though, so he saw this as a rematch with Jazz. Huski let Jazz know it, say­ing he want’s his hard­est tracks, and Jazz gave them! Mixes of time sig­na­tures, jazzy loops and no tra­di­tion­al Hip Hop beats made it hard as fuck, but Huski got through the round and held it up.

Gram­ski did really well, his best lines came when he spot­ted the second mic, and star­ted spit­ting in twos ‘look at it mates it’s double, double; I’m I’m, in in, trouble, trouble’ – killed it. He mixed a vari­ety of flows to match the beats, even when Jazz was scratch­ing and kept him­self right up there with the chance to win.

Broken Pen’s was the best though. He star­ted spit­ting dope writ­tens over whatever Jazz sent him, and des­pite most people asso­ci­at­ing this round with free­style, it showed how ver­sat­ile the brud­das pen game is. Jazz wasn’t feel­ing it though; to find some­thing Pen couldn’t flow over, he star­ted to cut, mash­ing up the track he had on the deck, but Pen just took it in his stride, switch­ing to free­style and full on battled the DJ. It was a dope moment that I’m sure really put Broken Pen’s score up; he went in.

Round 5 – Cypher 

4 bars 4 times; it was simple for this cal­ibre of emcee. Broken Pen and Wish leaned on writ­tens a bit, Feline and Gram­ski spat genu­ine free­styles and went in but Gee Bag really shone, rap­ping about Par­is in each of his sec­tions, put­ting in some French phrases and land­marks along the way. Huski, brought that in to
o half way, with his best bar being about going to Dis­ney­land to move to Dis­ney prin­cesses!

It was a dope end to a dope final. All the emcees had done them­selves proud, but for me at this point, it was between Gee Bag and Gram­ski for the title.

Live Per­form­ances – Shun­aji and Lady San­ity

While the judges delib­er­ated and added up the totals, the Brix­ton crowd was blessed by per­form­ances from 2 lyr­ic­al lion­esses Shun­aji and Lady San­ity. Shun­aji stepped u first, bring­ing an ill com­bin­a­tion of
soul­ful sung vocals and intro­spect­ive, obser­v­ant lyr­i­cism, all per­formed over beats that she trig­gers, edits a builds as she per­forms. After all the hype and testoster­one of the all-male EOW Final, the crowd really respon­ded to her energy and intim­ate stage pres­ence, fully enga­ging in and res­on­at­ing with her vibe. It was a dope per­form­ance from a tal­en­ted artist.

Lady San­ity man­aged to find a way to fuse both styles into her per­form­ance. The Birm­ing­ham emcee put down some excep­tion­al rhyme pat­terns, vari­ous top­ics and straight bars over jazzy, soul­ful sounds provided by her 4‑piece band. The tem­pos were mixed up between Boom Bap and 140 Grime style, and Lady San­ity rel­ished each beat, going in over everything and mak­ing a huge impact on the crowd.
This reached its max­im­um with the final track, a really unique ver­sion of Rage Against the Machines ‘Killing in the Name Of’, with San­ity spit­ting her own bars. The crowd went crazy, to the point it got played twice, and head­line act had shown why her repu­ta­tion is grow­ing round Eng­land and bey­ond.

The Decision

Like every chal­lenge we’ve had this sea­son, this final was close. Talk­ing to people around the ven­ue, it seemed that like me, Gee Bag and Gram­ski were most people’s favour­ites, and it did come down to these two mas­ter free­stylers. Huski88 was pro­nounced 3^rd, repeat­ing what he’d man­aged to in the pre­vi­ous final, which is no small feat.

When the final decision was announced, the judges had decided that Gram­ski was in 2^ndplace, mean­ing that Gee Bag had suc­cess­fully defen­ded his title for the 2^ndtime and become the 3x EOW Eng­land cham­pi­on. He’d killed the writ­ten, grab bag and cypher round, as well as being con­sist­ently good in the oth­er 2, and while Gram­ski had also killed his grab bag and acapella, as well as being con­sist­ent, the judges felt Gee Bag had done enough to take the win. It might had been dif­fer­ent if Gram­ski hadn’t repeated his writ­ten from his heat, or some of his acapella from 2017…but we’ll nev­er know that; our 2018 EOW Eng­land Cham­pi­on, deservedly so, for a 3^rdcon­sec­ut­ive time is Gee Bag, who’ll be going to Par­is on Octo­ber 27^thand look to take the world title. He moved from 5^thto 3^rdspot last time…could he jump 2 place again?

Stay locked to IAHH to find out, or even bet­ter COME TO PAR­IS!! Pre­s­ale tick­ets are only €8 and you get a lim­ited edi­tion EOW World Final T‑shirt, as well the chance to see the best free­stylers in the world, from USA, Eng­land, Que­bec, Czech Repub­lic, Hol­land, Uganda, Switzer­land, France, Bel­gi­um, Togo and for the first time China. It’s going to be WILD!!!

For tick­ets head to: https://m.digitick.com/end-of-the-weak-world-finals-concert-la-place-paris-27-octobre-2018-css5-mobdigitick-pg101-ri5650669.html

for more info head to: https://www.facebook.com/events/628606280819921/ 

All pho­to­graphy by Nadia Otshudi (@nadiaotshudi)

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Apex Zero

An emcee, beat­maker, film­maker and writer from Lon­don with Gren­adian roots, Apex Zero has spent his life learn­ing and liv­ing Hip Hop cul­ture, using it to inspire and affect change. Based in Beijing for a few years and reg­u­larly tour­ing the globe, Apex is well trav­elled, and uses the les­sons this provides to inform his art and out­look. He is a mem­ber of the Glob­al­Fac­tion digit­al pro­duc­tion house and the inter­na­tion­al Hip Hop col­lect­ive End of the Weak.

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